I make up exercise programs all the time. I keep thinking, "when I get this one perfected, I'll publish it. But by the time I get it "perfected", I get burned out on it or the seasons change and I wind up with a different mix of activities. But some of the programs I've developed are pretty darn decent, and are worth revisiting. So I finally figured out that I should publish an outline of what I'm doing, as I'm doing it. Then I'll be able to come back to it whenever I want to. (And when I get around to publishing descriptions of the various exercises, I'll be able to make collections based on the outlines!)

So here is the program I'm using at the moment. I'll be modifying it as I go along, so the version you see in Jan/Feb 2008 will be a snapshot of what I'm currently doing. (By March, it should be stable, and I will probably be working on some other program.)

Note:
For an easier program to get started with, see the 2007 Workout Plan.

Goals

The general idea is to establish a sustainable level of activity--one that gets results and lets you know you're doing the someting, without leaving you so sore and tired that you can't keep doing it. So by all means customize what you see here to establish a minimum level of exercise that you can sustain.

The specific goals of the program are:

• General fitness & muscle tone
• Fat burning
• Skills (For me, golf. But substitute
• Strength building (somewhat)
• Cardiovascular work (somewhat)

The general focus is on:

• Strength exercise in the morning, to up the metabolism and build the muscle that produces a great shape as it burns fat.
• Cardio exercise in the afternoon or evening to strengthen the heart and lungs, and to burn fat
• Mind/Body exercise at night that relaxes the body and promotes a meditative state of mind.

The program is designed for a man, so it incorporates a lot of strength work.

Principles

1. Set a time limit.
   That's especially necessary for the morning strength workouts. Ten minutesin the morning is plenty to get the metabolism working and stimulate growth. (Twenty to forty minutes is great in the afternoon/evening.) It seems like it would be easy to keep to the limit in the morning, given the need to get on with your day. But as I get stronger, I find myself adding exercises. Pretty soon, I'm up to 20 or 30 minutes. A few weeks after that, I'm into overtraining--I feel listless, generally fatigued, and I'm not as productive. But it sneaks up so slowly I never see it coming. A time limit helps to prevent that. It can really be your friend.
    
2. Vary the exercises and intensity.
   The time limit really helps there. Up the intensity by taking shorter rests and doing more exercises. Lower the intensity with longer rests. Save any exercises you don't do for the next time. When you're picking exercises, let your body be your guide. What feels like it hasn't been used in a while? Give it some attention. Use the exercises shown here as a very general guide.
    
3. Stretch during or after every activity.
   Stretching promotes growth and improves recovery time.
   

Schedule

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
am	Fitness & Stretch (upper body)	Weights-1 (pick one)	Kick & Stretch	Fitness & Stretch (lower body)	Weights-2 (pick one)	Kick & Stretch	---
pm/eve	Swing & Walk (Drvng Rnge)	Run & Stretch	Martial Arts &/or Dance	Walk/Play	PowerWalk/ Run / Dance	Cycle & Short Game	PowerRun
nite	Yoga	Tai Chi	Yoga	Tai Chi	Yoga	Tai Chi

Notes

• "A & B" means do both. "A / B" is one or the other (Bad weather: Cycle indoors for cardio.)
• Golf, swimming, cycling, or volleyball substitutes for other cardio exercises on a given day.
• Tues, Thu, and Sat are skills days. Do golf or any activity you favor.
• This Text indicates a highly optional activity--as energy levels allow.
  

Morning Exercises

Fitness & Stretch	Wgts-1	Kick & Stretch	Wgts-2 (Dbells)
Upper Body Push up / Bow -------------- Pull up / Side Stretch -------------- Crunch / Cobra Hip Lift / Kneeling Lunge -------------- Chin up / Palms behind (sitting on floor)	Kettlebell Clean & jerk Side press Snatch Med. Clubbell Mill Rocket squats Big circles Iron Cross Drum Thor's hammer Samuraii Sword	Joint Rotations JSW Warmups -------------- Leg Swings & Sweeps -------------- Front kick Side kick Round house Back kick Hook kick Spin roundhouse -------------- Stretch Meditate	Deadlift Shrug -------------- Squat Explosions Side Hops -------------- Punch Pull -------------- Punch Press -------------- Pec Flies -------------- Ovhd Press Trap Raise Tricep Press Curls -------------- Back Flies Front Delts Side Delts
Lower Body Squat Jump / Quad sit & Child Calf bounce and hold / Calf stretch -------------- Floor Twist / Sit Twist -------------- Leg curls / Hamstring & Hangover	Lg. Club Front to Back Ovhd Sword Sm Clubs Mill w/ Flair Figure 8's Small circles	Joint Rotations JSW Warmups -------------- Shuffle & Shift Hewson Triples -------------- Jump Front Jump/Push Side Jump Round House Jump Crescent Jump Back Jump Spin -------------- Stretch Meditate

Morning exercises are centered around strength training. Two days a week are for general fitness, focusing on abs and bodyweight exercises. Two days are devoted to weight training, focusing on the upper body using dumbbells, clubbells, indian clubs to focus on the upper body, plus a kettlebell for full-body muscle-synchronization and fat burning. The remaining two days are focused on kicking techniques, which works up a sweat while focusing on the abs, legs, and lower body.

Other Notes:

• Light ankle weights for leg curls
• In Wgts 2 sequence, drop weight for each section

Afternoon and Evening Activities

Afternoon and evening activites focus on cardio work and skill drills. Mostly, they're outdoors--early afternoons on cold days, and early evening on warm ones. For running, it's nice to do several kinds of runs in a sequence--but most often I'll play it by ear:

• PowerWalk / PowerRun
  • PowerWalk = hike with Trekking Poles
  • PowerRun = long distance outing with Trekking Poles: walking uphill, running down
     
• Weekend Runs (cycle through these)
  • Easy/fun run -- breathing easily for 30-40 minutes
  • Medium Distance Run -- 60-80 minutes
  • Easy/fun run -- breathing easily for 30-40 minutes
  • Long Distance run / PowerWalk, with Trekking poles (power walk uphill, run down, 2+ hrs)
     
• Mid-Week Runs (cycle through these)
  • Easy/fun run -- breathing easily for 30-40 minutes
  • Speed run -- warm up, then hard sprints up a hill with recovery jogs
  • Tempo run -- warm up, then breathing hard for 20-30 minutes
     
• Martial Arts
  • Forms -- Every martial arts form I know.
  • Power -- Heavy bag, weighted kicks, weighted stances, weighted punches

Nighttime Yoga

If I have time and energy, I do full series in a style of Yoga I call Pulsing Yoga. If it's late and I'm tired, I'll do a shorter sequence with 30-second holds, and get to bed:

• Lion
• Sit on heels (quad sit)
• Child/Traditional bow
• Sit between heels / bend back
  --------------
• Cat stretch
• Downward dog
  --------------
• Face down corpse (face left)
  
• Superman / Cobra
• Locust / Bow
• Face down corpse (face right)
  --------------
• Whole body pose (1)
• Plow
• Whole body pose (2)
• Ab Lever
• Corpse pose
  --------------
• Butterfly (sit, bend)
• Straddle (sit, bend)
• Twist / Half Lotus / Cobbler's Pose
  --------------
• Fish
• Hip Stretch
• Meditate

Mixing it Up

When you've been doing the exercises for 4 to 6 weeks, your body will begin to acclimate to the work load. That's also when things will tend to get a little boring. You can shake things up without changing the exercises by taking some days off.

You do the same exercises on the same days, you just don't work out every day. That varies the workload, gives your body more time to recover to prevent the fatigue that comes from overtraining, and lets you work even harder on the days that you do exercise.

Here's a good series of variations for the weeks following your 4-6 week acclimation period. Workout however you want on weekends. During the week, exercise on the days shown:

• Week 1: Tue -- Thu
• Week 2: Mon -- Wed -- Thu
• Week 3: Mon -- Tue -- Thu -- Fri
• Week 4: Wed
• Week 5: Mon -- Tue -- Wed -- Thu -- Fri
• Week 6: Off

After that, you can get a pair of dice, and use one of them to randomly schedule your workouts:

• 1: Wed
• 2: Tue -- Thu
• 3: Mon -- Wed -- Fri
• 4: Mon -- Tue -- Thu -- Fri
• 5: Mon -- Tue -- Wed -- Thu -- Fri
• 6: Off

For even more variety, you can roll two dice: one for your morning workouts (strength), and once for afternoon/evening workouts (cardio).

Finally, you come up with a system that weights the workouts, so you do some patterns more often than others:

• 2 (1 combination: 1-1): Off
• 3 (2 combinations: 1-2, 2-1): Wed
• 4 (3 combinations: 1-3, 2-2, 3-1): Tue -- Thu
• 5 (4 combinations: 1-4, 2-3, 3-2, 4-1): Mon -- Wed -- Fri
• 6 (5 combinations: 1-5, 2-4, 3-3, 4-2, 5-1): Mon -- Tue -- Thu -- Fri
• 7 (6 combinations: 1-6, 2-5, 3-4, 4-3, 5-2, 6-1): Mon -- Tue -- Wed -- Thu -- Fri
• 8 (5 combinations: 2-6, 3-5, 4-4, 5-3, 6-2): Mon -- Tue -- Thu -- Fri
• 9 (4 combinations: 3-6, 4-5, 5-4, 6-3): Mon -- Wed -- Fri
• 10 (3 combinations: 4-6, 5-5, 6-4): Tue -- Thu
• 11 (2 combinations: 5-6, 6-5): Wed
• 12 (1 combination: 6-6): Off

With that weighting, o ut of 36 possible combinations of the 2 dice, you will tend to be totally off twice, do one workout 4 times, 2 workouts 6 times, 3 workouts 8 times, 4 workouts 10 times, and 5 workouts 6 times. (Vary the assignments to get any distribution you like.)

If you roll once for morning strength workouts, and once again for afternoon/evening cardio workouts, you get one heck of a lot of schedule variation, without changing the exercises.

Let Soreness be Your Guide

Another way to achieve variation--and prevent overtraining--is to listen to your body. The nice thing about having an exercise plan is that if you're sore after exercising, you can just skip a few sessions until you feel fully recovered. You can then return to the plan when you're ready to exercise again. (You'll know what that is--your body is just itching for some activity).

Note:
When you like as many different activities as I do, it's really nice to have a plan. Because instead of wondering "What should I do today?", you have a pre-set activity ready to select. (Or change! Be flexible.)

The other advantage to that system is that, over time, you will engage in the kind of exercise-variety that promotes general fitness and avoids repetetive-stress injuries. Even if you only exercise every third day, it's more than nothing. Over a six or eight period, you'll hit all of the activities. And as you grow stronger and recover faster, you'll wind up doing more, little by little, until you're exercising nearly every day. (But it's easy to get carried away, go into overtraining, and wind up giving up due to general fatigue and boredom. I know! It's practically a lifestyle with me. So take it easy on yourself!)

Resources

Articles:

• Pulsing Yoga

Sites:

• Jung Su Won martial arts and meditation training